Predating Predators
by Sunshinecackle
Summary: When Wanda's life is put at risk, Pietro must do the literal impossible in order to save her. He didn't realize that seducing the apparent last male Harpy in existence was going to be a very real part of the plan.


**Title:** Predating Predators  
 **Author:** Donnie  
 **Fandom:** Marvel Cinematic Universe  
 **Setting:** Various; Somewhere between Kosno, Poland and Novi Grad, Sokovia  
 **Pairing:** Clint Barton/Pietro Maximoff  
 **Characters:** Clint Barton, Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, OC: Christabella, OC: Shasta, OC: Muni, OC: Papillon  
 **Genre:** Fantasy/Romance  
 **Rating:** M  
 **Chapters:** 1/?  
 **Word Count:** 1956  
 **Type of Work:** Chapter Fic  
 **Status:** Incomplete  
 **Warnings:** Gay, Slash, Yaoi, AU - Canon Divergent, AU - Myths and Fantasy, Clint is a Harpy, Pietro and Wanda are still mutants, Teratophilia, Kidnapping, Sacrifice, Witchcraft, Implied animal abuse, Implied Predation, Pietro and Wanda are 17 so I guess underage?, Underage, More To Come

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own anything, except for Christabella, Shasta, Muni and Papillon. I am also not native to Eastern Europe and do not have a very good grasp of the geography or culture beyond what I have in the source material. I have placed Sokovia roughly at the convergence of Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, as I couldn't find much more about where it should be placed. If anyone wants to try and help me determine a better spot for it (if this is just way off base), please let me know!

 **Summary:** When Wanda's life is put at risk, Pietro must do the literal impossible in order to save her. He didn't realize that seducing the apparent last male Harpy in existence was going to be a very real part of the plan.

 **AN:** Welp, I dedicate this entirely to my BFF, Ed. ; u; I love her so much, and we were discussing this last night a little bit. I got a little out of control with it, so it'll be at least a few chapters long. My brain keeps saying THREE but something tells me that is not exactly true. At any rate, this is a pretty big shift in AU.

I'm sure Avengers stuff is happening but it's not near Sokovia, at this point. Anyway, have fun with this, kids, I know I will!

 **Chapter One: What They Say Is True** ****

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Life in Sokovia had never been what Pietro Maximoff would call easy. Between himself and his twin sister, things had gotten harder with the world around them. They held a bond so tight nothing could break them but each other; and it showed.

Pietro had been described as 'wickedly fast'. He could rob an entire city blind in a blink of an eye and nobody would know it was him. Of course, he'd never bothered to do something quite that extravagant, stealing what they needed to survive and little more. After all, the twins had been on their own for a long time, now. He could think back and remember a small hand on his arm, the only thing keeping him from rocketing off, the night it had happened. They had been inseparable ever since.

Wanda was what people considered a witch. Maybe she really, truly was, but Pietro had never seen anything that would make him think of those old, bawdry tales. He had yet to see her eat a baby, like many people asserted she must, or pull the tail from a rat for a potion. In fact, she never seemed to imbibe anything aside from the occasional juices and milk he was able to steal for them, and water. No potions in sight, no cats, no bats, rats or other such creatures. The only thing people shrieked about when they saw her was her ability to graze their minds. Okay, she could do a bit more than that, but most people didn't give her the chance, if they knew about it at all.

The thing that seemed to have brought their existence crashing to a pitiful end was not so much Wanda being a witch, however, so much as her affinity for likeminded women. Pietro wouldn't say anything about her friends, but should she catch him thinking something untoward, he usually got a pointed glare. He had never quite lifted his mental guards after the last time, because he could feel her presence in his brain. If she wanted this friendship with these psychopaths so badly, then he would let her have it.

But that didn't mean that he wanted _them_ to have _her_.

When Wanda didn't come home when she was supposed to, when his days' worth of hard work paid off and she wasn't there to celebrate with him, to break bread with him… He began to worry.

She had insisted that they needed some time without a _boy_ present, and that had caused him to balk for a moment, point to himself and mouth 'me?' at her. Her light laughter and nodding only made him pout, there was no other word for it, but he nodded and let her go. Responsibility was not exactly his forte, but he could handle things while she spent time with her friends. Now, he was starting to wish he'd followed them.

At least he knew where they usually congregated, not that that made much of a difference in the time it took to find them. Even moving faster than the eye could comprehend, it was an awful lot of forest to cover, and the four girls Wanda had fallen in with were good at nothing more than hiding their tracks. For a coven of witches in a place like this, it was an important part of their everyday life.

If he was going to have to go on a damn witch hunt, though, he wished he had made the decision not to do so on an empty stomach.

Speeding to a stop outside of the fifth camp he'd come across, he didn't even have the decency to act tired as he pressed up against a tree and listened, straining his ears and trying to keep himself absolutely still. With what they were saying, cackling to each other, it was nearly impossible.

"We should hurry, before her meddling brother shows up." One of them was saying, slurping down something that looked less like soup and more like a thick, gloppy run-off of some kind.

"No, no, we want him, too." The eldest girl, just a few years older than him and Wanda, spoke with a little chortle, pointing her spoon at the other girl. Pietro could feel bile rising in his throat but he didn't know if it had to do with what they were saying or what they appeared to be eating. "He could be a good…" She paused, sniffing the air, and he had to wonder if he'd falling on the wrong side of the wind. "Speak of the devil." She spoke, finally, rising from her seat and greeting him with wide open arms.

Even Pietro had no idea when he'd walked from the tree he'd been clutching and practically vibrating against to the clearing they had chosen, and he narrowed his icy eyes at them.

"I want my sister."

"Well, good evening to you, too." The eldest responded, rolling her eyes, "You never were exactly good with your manners, were you? It does show that you raised yourselves in a barn." The venom in the cut of his eyes caused her to chuckle, waving him off as she turned around. "At any rate, she is ours, now. You cannot-"

"I will take her, and she will not be yours." The growl in his voice only caused her to turn slightly, glancing at him over her shoulder. He didn't like how she looked down her nose at him, and he barely managed to still himself from searching the camp for his sister.

"You will not have her!" The youngest, a girl just short of Wanda and Pietro's seventeen, shouted as she rose to her feet, only to be silenced by the eldest. "Christabella-"

"Calm now, Shasta." Christabella responded, her lips pulling into a sneer, "Pietro can have her, if he does us a few… Favors." She clucked her tongue, shaking her head as she turned, brushing back crimson locks and turning golden eyes on the speedster. He looked pensive, but stepped up to the plate, shoulders back and head held high. Backing down was not an option, not when Wanda's life was at stake. "You must do three simple tasks for us."

Simple, he could handle. Difficult, that would take him five minutes. Impossible would take twenty, if he really put his mind to it.

"And what are these tasks?" His skepticism was rewarded with a cold chuckle and a mirthless smile that didn't quite meet Christabella's golden eyes.

"You will bring us the first drops of dew, before they have fallen. It is very important that they are retrieved before falling, and they will not be accepted should we find you cheated." The blond to her left, Shasta, practically cackled. It was an impossible thing to ask of someone, nobody could move quickly enough to do such a thing. It had never been done.

Pietro grit his teeth. They must not have heard much about him, or paid him much mind. Either way, he waited in a silence swarming with the friction of the air on his skin as he forced himself to remain still. Now would be no time to show off his grand speed, or they just might scrap his one easy task entirely.

"The second is to collect the feather of a male Harpy." The fourth woman, stocky and dark haired with skin the color of unprocessed cotton, smirked. A Harpy on her own was a beast to be reckoned with, but a male of the species had never so much as been spotted. They were fierce, however, enough that if he so much as tried, he would die, leaving them to their work. A Harpy could turn its own feathers to stone, should it want or need to, which only made the idea of his failure that much greater.

When Christabella went quiet and her gaggle of gossiping geese followed suit, Pietro crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes until he nearly couldn't see despite the roaring fire.

"And the third task…?" He finally tried, obviously perturbed by the quiver in his voice.

"Should you survive the first two, the third will be waiting for you here." Christabella told him matter-of-factly, turning on her heel and settling back in front of the fire. Suddenly, it was as if their conversation had not happened at all, and he found himself shut out completely no matter how many times he tried to speak to them.

While he hated being ignored, he hated knowing that Wanda could be hurt or worse with every second that he put this off. First dew, and a Harpy. _Male_ Harpy. This was going to be great, just great. The first one sounded easy enough for someone with his abilities, but the Harpy thing was… Honestly driving him to tap his hand against his hip so quickly he was sure he'd knock himself over.

"I need a drink." He murmured, knowing he wasn't quite old enough to have one, before he went stock still. A drink. That was it! If there was a place in every village and town from here to Russia and back, it was a bar. And where there were bars, there were superstitious old men ready to spill their ideas about every mythical being and creature under the sun.

Between Novi Grad, Sokovia and Kosno, Poland, he managed to find a rumor that lead him to a specific bar, in a specific, small but scenic village just short of being a clump of houses in the middle of nowhere. There were whispers of a Harpy that lived high on the mountain, perched in a way that nobody could actually travel beyond the treeline on any side. They said he (and definitely 'he' every time) was strong and impossibly voracious, but that wasn't exactly turning him away.

With a new outfit under his belt, a thick coat with layers and lined in wool, thick pants and boots he could still run in, and a thickly woolen balaclava to keep himself from freezing to death, Pietro Maximoff was ready to scale a mountain and take care of this once and for all.

While the trees and animals alike could have taken his breath away with their beauty, the sunsets and rises being something he could have actually stood and waited for, something else was cutting off his oxygen the higher up he went. Height, he remembered, had never been his friend, and he'd just about sped off past the treeline before he started to feel light headed, out of breath, and sluggish. Maybe 'sluggish' for PIetro Maximoff was more of a regular pace, but when he finally staggered from the treeline and gazed up at the cold, unforgiving grey sky above him, he had to harden his resolve. This was for Wanda. She would die if he didn't succeed.

A small thought pressed at the back of his mind, flavored in her voice.

 _But if you die, we will both perish._

Shaking the thought out of his head, snowflakes persistent in their agenda to cling to his hood, he scanned the mountainside as far as he could see. Where was this nest he was looking for? It would have been more helpful to come up here with someone who knew the area, or at least a hand-drawn map on a napkin, _anything_ would be better than coming up blind. A whistle behind him sounded less like wind and more like an animal, and when he turned, muscles tense, he barely had a second before something heavy, hard and sharp collided with his head and he went down like a sack of bricks.

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 **AN:** Welp, there we are, the first chapter. I'm excited to get into the next one, even if this isn't going to go very long. I really have no plan, just kind of… Flying by the seat of my pants. At any rate, I got this out in record time. I hadn't quite expected it to go as well as it did. I hope you guys enjoyed! If you want more, keep in mind that nothing motivates me to finish something like feedback!


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